Dr. Fiona O'Reilly:

With regard to children, Safetynet goes where there is a gap and where there is a need. We have not to date expanded our primary care services to families with children in hotels. It would not be a good sign if we had to do that. Just as people should be kept out of homelessness, they should be kept out of homeless-specific services. This would indicate a failure on the part of our mainstream primary care services. Additional supports will be required to keep families in these mainstream services, additional liasion and transport provision, for example. This needs to be done because we will have failed again if another cohort comes into homeless services.

In response the co-ordination mentioned by Ms Dolan, I agree that homeless individuals should not be taken out of mainstream services and put into a separate system. It should not be a question of entering a separate system. We need co-ordination to prevent this from happening and to have enough clout within the mainstream services to say that cases are not appropriate for homeless services and should be under the local authority or the HSE, for example. Services need to be more flexible and the level of co-ordination mentioned would be of benefit.